The landscape genre, understood in a contemporary manner, can be understood as a
metaphorical projection surface with a wide open horizon. The landscape as a
formal-aesthetic basis for the localisation of the relationship between mankind to the
environment is the locus of a fascinating study of contemporary problems and
dilemmas. Idea and actuality lie on the same plane, and are both socially and
historically constituted. Contrary to a haphazard rendering of the world, this
exhibition proposes to stage a wide-ranging, both profoundly psychological and
emotional landscape, in tune with different moods, emotional registers and desires,
while at the same time inquiring into different definitions of and relations to nature,
or addressing the crisis of social norms and orientation. In this understanding of
landscape, the evocation of a primordial, original nature forms an accessible,
universal backdrop, against which all too human doubts and self-questioning in an
instable environment become tangible.

The focus of the exhibition is to unite positions developed by young artists in the
particularly vibrant art scenes of Berlin and Budapest. Through an intelligent
selection, this exhibition wants to provide new perspectives and reflections upon the
lives and realities of young people today. The artists I envisage focus their work on
human perception and self-reflection in the wake of a post-modern dissolution of all
known boundaries. These works offer different insights and aesthetic manifestations
of the latent, individual forces, energies and auto-suggestions that conspire to shape
our age; exhibited together, they create a rich portrait of the present moment and its
zeitgeist.

The works of West- and Central-European artists are to be viewed together with
those of Eastern-European artists; for I feel that while the westernised, multi-national
artistic community in Berlin very subtly captures the backgrounds and ultimate
manifestations of contemporary lifestyles, artists with an Eastern-European
background are often profoundly concerned with memory, limitation and indeed
regression, which are at times evoked figuratively, at times very poetically.
The combination of these different positions is to be read as a single European
landscape, that postulates an aesthetic unity and intricate interdependency of east
and west. The exhibition wants to shed light upon the contemporary European
condition, a complex, post-modern mix of simultaneities; while at the same time
drawing attention to its philosophical limitations. Furthermore, the exchange
between western and eastern contemporary artists and their heterogeneous artistic
strategies draws attention to the historical depth of today’s lived reality.

Content
In this sense, the following can be seen as the central works and fields of interest
upon which the exhibition is to be hinged:
- Floating, consciously abandoning a central perspective, decentred personalities
(see Deenesh Ghyczy, Geronimo, S. 6 ; Menno Aden, O.T./M.O., S. 7)
- The loss of self, the immersion in past worlds or nostalgia as a contemporary
mode of living (Natalie Pelosi, It Ain´t Me, Babe 11, S. 6; Adam Bota, Rast & Der Stammgast, S. 7)
- Portraits, which shed light on perception as such and express a distant, alienated
view of the self and its fragmentation (Attila Szücs, Red Room, S. 8; Deenesh Ghyczy, Ben
2, S. 12)
- Representations of the contemporary human-to-nature relationship and its
blurring (Simone Haack, O.T. 19, Seite 9; Alejandro Rodriguez Gonzalez, Pozo y Demas, S. 11)
- Empty and constructed landscapes, which refer to the romantic individual (and
beholder of nature) only as an absence, or at best an abstract presence (Philip von
Mentzingen, Maps, S. 8; J.M. Pozo, Stigma, S. 11)
- Post-romantic projections of desire, which proclaim the restoration of lost
identity and/or unity with nature (Anne Wölk, Event Horizon, S. 9; Attila Szücs, Girl with
Three Stripes of Light at Night, S. 10)
Themes
The exhibition is divided into five thematic areas which cover the entire spectrum of
the artworks proposed. The division between east and west is thus undermined and
overcome in favour of the following five themes. It is particularly interesting that the
works of one artist might refer to several different themes. These overlaps, as with
those between east and west, create the surge that turns the exhibitions’ five thematic
pillars into visual metaphors of wider, both critical and contemplative relevance to
the contemporary European condition.

The five thematic areas the exhibition proposes are thus:

- Lifestyle
- Regression
- Longing
- Reconstruction
- Nature

These categories are to be understood primarily and most importantly in an aesthetic
sense. That is to say, they are open for a wide range of references and motives, as
they might also be part of the original impulse for the making of a particular work of
art. What matters most is the range of associations possible within these five thematic
areas. Thus issues such as ‘individuality’ might be addressed by the theme Life Style.
Detachment or disorientation might be understood as Regression, while a formallyaesthetically
prohibitive, yet romantically evocation of landscape could be
interpreted as Longing. Issues such as ‘memory’ or ‘perception’ can be understood as
Reconstruction; whereas representations of an original state of nature and its utter
inaccessibility fall under Nature.

Participating Artists

Painting stands at the centre of the exhibition, complemented by photography and
objects or installations. The majority of the works are by artists I represent in Berlin
(see http://uwegoldenstein.de) or which are in Hungarian collections of young art,
supervised in Budapest by Tóth Pál Sándor. The concept envisages a selection of
approx. 60 works by some 30 contemporary artists who are not yet established on the
art market and who live in Berlin or Budapest. Amongst the participants are around
6 Hungarian artists, the other, mostly Berlin-based are from Germany, the
Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Austria and Cuba. The group exhibition aims to showcase
the earnest and individual approaches of these artists to the central contemporary
philosophical themes outlined above, and to thus make them accessible and
interesting both for a wider public and for museums and other arts institutions.

Catalogue

The exhibition is to be accompanied by a catalogue, in which approximately 10
artistic positions from east and west are contextualised, discussed and compared.
The image part is to amount to approximately 3/4 of the total length of 150 pages.
The text part is to be composed primarily by a continuo’s, in-depth curatorial essay
written by myself, which outlines the contemporary relevance and philosophical
importance of the exhibitions five core themes. The appendix consists of brief
biographical portraits of all the participating artists, as well as short introductions to
their oeuvres.

Presentation & Dates

The exhibition takes place in autumn 2011 at the CHB – Collegium Hungaricum
Berlin, the Hungarian Cultural Institute in close proximity to the Berlin
Museumsinsel. Young European Landscape is designed as a travelling exhibition,
making it attractive for further presentations in other European cities as of January
2012. The exhibition surface should be at least 400sqm. The themes and titles are
always in English, to facilitate the international presentation of the exhibition in
Berlin and Budapest.